Then the sun grew higher still, and reached the highest point before beginning to descend, and then down, down, down, all through the hot afternoon, till its light began to grow softer and more mellow, and the shadows cast by the tree-trunks went out in a different direction to that which they had taken when Bart dropped asleep.
All at once he awoke in a fright, for something hard was thumping and pawing at his chest, and on looking up, there was Black Boy right over him, scraping and pawing at him as if impatient to go on.
“Why, I must have been asleep,” cried Bart, catching at the horse’s head-stall and thrusting him away. “Gently, old boy; your hoofs are not very soft. You hurt.”
He raised himself up, stretching the while.
“How tiresome to sleep like that!” he muttered. “Why, I had not finished my breakfast, and—”
Bart said no more, but stood there motionless staring straight before him, where the plain was now ruddy and glowing with the rays of the evening sun.
For there, about a mile away, he could see a body of some twenty or thirty Indians coming over the plain at an easy rate, guided evidently by one on foot who ran before them with bended head, and Bart knew as well as if he had heard the words shouted in his ear that they were following him by his trail.
There was not a moment to lose, and with trembling hands he secured the buckles of his saddle-girths, and strapped on the various little articles that formed his luggage, slung his rifle, and then leading the cob to the other side of the patch of woodland, where he would be out of sight of the Indians, he mounted, marked a spot on the horizon which would keep him in a direct line and the woodland clump as long as possible between him and his enemies, and rode swiftly off.
The inclination was upon him to gaze back, but he knew in doing so he might swerve from the bee-line he had marked out, and he resisted the temptation, riding on as swiftly as his cob could go, and wondering all the while why it was that he had not been seen.
If he had been with the Apachés he would have ceased to wonder, for while Bart was galloping off on the other side, his well-rested and refreshed horse going faster and faster each minute as he got into swing, the Indians began to slacken their pace. There was no doubt about the trail, they knew: it led straight into the patch of woodland; and as this afforded ample cover, they might at any moment find themselves the objects of some able rifle-firing; and as they had suffered a good deal lately in their ranks, they were extra cautious.